Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [287]
But from Triplett’s day to the present, the value of social psychology has been as much a matter of practical application to real-life concerns as of deeper understanding of fundamental principles. The beneficial uses of social psychology are remarkable: among them are ways to get better compliance by medical patients; the use of cooperative rather than competitive classroom methods; social support groups and networks for the widowed and divorced, substance abusers, and others in crisis; training in interpersonal communication in T-groups; the improving of the mood and mental functioning of nursing home patients by giving them greater control and decision-making power; new ways of treating depression, loneliness, and shyness; classroom training in empathy and prosocial behavior; control of family conflict by means of small-group and family therapy.76
Some years ago, after the Crisis in Social Psychology had passed and the discipline was back in good health, Elliot Aronson voiced what he and many other social psychologists felt about their field:
[It] is my belief that social psychology is extremely important—that social psychologists can play a vital role in making the world a better place… [and can have] a profound and beneficial impact on our lives by providing an increased understanding of such important phenomena as conformity, persuasion, prejudice, love, and aggression.76
Today, nearly two decades later, social psychologists retain that passionate affirmative belief in the value of their discipline. As the authors of a leading textbook proclaimed in 2006:
Virtually everything we do, feel, or think is related in some way to the social side of life. In fact, our relations with other people are so central to our lives and happiness that it is hard to imagine existing without them… Survivors of shipwrecks or plane crashes who spend long periods of time alone often state that not having relationships with other people was the hardest part of their ordeal—more difficult to bear than lack of food or shelter. In short, the social side of life is, in many ways, the core of our existence. It is this basic fact that makes social psychology— the branch of psychology that studies all aspects of social behavior and social thought—so fascinating and essential.77
That view of the discipline may be why, despite the compelling attractions of the glamorous newer fields of cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, and cognitive neuroscience, the membership of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology has grown by 50 percent in just the past dozen years and now has 4,500 members.
What matter, then, if social psychology has no proper boundaries, no agreed-upon definition, and no unifying theory?
* We will concern ourselves only with the psychological version of social psychology.
* All the students, after the true purpose of the experiment was revealed, were asked to return the money. Only one student—who had received $1—objected (Aron and Aron, 1989:115).
* At least, in social psychology, but not, alas, elsewhere; the horrendous behavior of American prison guards at Abu Ghraib was Zimbardo’s experiment writ large.
* One of many awards to Morton Deutsch. The latest is the 2006–2007 James McKeen Cattell Award of the Association for Psychological Science—its highest award in applied psychological science.
FOURTEEN
The Perception
Psychologists
Interesting Questions
Aminnow, with almost no brain to speak of, can see (more or less); so can an ant, whose entire nervous system consists of only a few hundred neurons; and so can many another creature that has nothing remotely akin to a mind. It might seem, therefore, that visual perception is a physiological function and, though it influences many psychological processes, is not itself one of them.*
Throughout the centuries, however, most philosophers and psychologists have considered perception, at least in human beings, a fundamentally psychological function; it is the mind’s link to external reality, of which we know only